Short answer
If FortiManager goes down, your FortiGate firewalls keep applying their security policies on site. Your traffic is not dropped. FortiManager only sets up and coordinates your firewalls. It does not inspect traffic itself.
In detail: What happens if FortiManager goes down?
How FirstNet protects the management plane:
- Production FortiManager runs as a high-availability (HA) pair
- Configuration is backed up daily
- A documented recovery runbook is in place
- By default, FortiManager runs as a VM on FirstNet Private Cloud in South Africa
During an outage, the main impact is that new policy changes cannot be pushed until management is restored. Existing policies, VPNs and security profiles on your firewalls keep working as configured.
FortiManager also keeps a history of configuration changes. It does this for each device and for each ADOM (administrative domain, a group of devices managed together). If recovery ever needs it, a configuration can be rolled back to a known-good state.
You log incidents through FirstNet's Rapid Response desk. If the fault is in a Fortinet product or platform, FirstNet escalates it to Fortinet TAC (Technical Assistance Center) under FortiCare. You do not have to manage the vendor yourself.
Source: FirstNet Hosted Firewall & Network Security service page →